Dummies.com is known for simple, concise how-to content. Knol is one of the easiest and most powerful tools for sharing knowledge online. Now we’ve teamed up to give you the chance to write a how-to article about something you’re particularly good at – and just maybe become famous (and even a little bit richer) in the process.

To enter the contest, simply click the button and begin creating your own how-to knol about whatever subject you know best.

If you need help or inspiration, you can browse other submissions, check out these great knols on buttermilk pancakes and backpacking, or take a look at any of the excellent content on Dummies.com. Google has even created a “How-to” template to get you started.

Check back often to see all the ideas, and good luck writing your own knol. I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with. :) .

To enter Knol and dummies.com contest go here and “One grand prize winner will receive a cash prize of $1,000″….

Google has released four new Addons for Gmail in Gmail Labs today. The experiments bring previews from Picasa, YouTube, Flickr and Yelp into mails.

To mail a link to Picasa, YouTube, Flickr or Yelp is included below are small preview images. As the Gmail blog post is, it works similarly to the identification and linking of addresses, calendar data and packet numbers.

Google built some new Gmail Labs features that do just that. For our first set, we picked stuff that often shows up in email: YouTube videos, Picasa and Flickr links, and Yelp reviews. Turn on Picasa previews from the Labs tab under Settings, and rather than having to click on a Picasa album link to see the photos it contains, you can see photos right in the message itself:

Same for Flickr:

Enable Youtube previews, and you can watch YouTube videos from inside your email:

And whenever you receive a Yelp link in an email, Yelp previews show you ratings, phone numbers, and other listing information right there:

Give them a try and send Google your thoughts. If you work on a product that would lend itself to a great preview in Gmail, Google would love to hear from you too.

Now, in conjunction with Google Calendar, you can see all of your orkut friend’s birthdays for the whole year. If you’ve already used Google Calendar before, you will shortly see a link (right below the “upcoming birthdays” section) where you can add your orkut friends’ birthdays to your Google calendar.

Once you’ve added your orkut birthday calendar to Google Calendar, you can navigate forward and backwards through time to see whose birthday is coming up and any birthdays you might have missed. If you don’t see the promotional link, use this URL to subscribe to the calendar, announces orkut Blog.

For more information, visit orkut Blog Here..

Google has fixed an annoying feature that used to mark entire Gmail’s threaded conversations as “unread,” after you cliked “mark as unread” button. When you open next time, you’ve to remember which messages you already read and which ones you didn’t.

Now if you’re reading a conversation that had unread messages when you opened it and you mark it unread, Gmail will only mark those messages that were unread when you opened the conversation in the first place.

The EPIC (The Electronic Privacy Information Center) has a complaint filed against Google asking the FTC (U.S. Competition Authority Federal Trade Commission) about the Civil rights organization Electronic Privacy Information Center, the complaint here published.

Here is a summary of the complaint that is filed:

This complaint concerns privacy and security risks associated with the provision of “Cloud Computing Services” by Google, Inc. to American consumers, businesses, and federal agencies of the United States government. Recent reports indicate that Google does not adequately safeguard the confidential information that it obtains. Given the previous opinions of the Federal Trade Commission regarding the obligation of service providers to ensure security, EPIC hereby petitions the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into Google’s Cloud Computing Services, to determine the adequacy of the privacy and security safeguards, to assess the representations made by the firm regarding these services, to determine whether the firm has engaged in unfair and/or deceptive trade practices, and to take any such measures as are necessary, including to enjoin Google from offering such services until safeguards are verifiably established. Such action by the Commission is necessary to ensure the safety and security of information submitted to Google by American consumers, American businesses, and American federal agencies. And the complaint is published. here …..

EPIC also asks the FTC to check the security services in the Google Docs, Gmail, Picasa or Google Calendar to be verify again. Furthermore, Google has improved the security than when it initially set up the services.

[Sources]

Google itself gave to this statement:

“We have a copy of this complaint, but we have not yet viewed the details. Many providers of cloud computing services, including Google, have taken extensive measures, procedures and technologies developed to the highest level of data protection. In fact, the Save in the “Cloud” even safer than on the disk. We are very aware that our users have their data are very important and take this responsibility very seriously.

A new version of Google Spreadsheets is here! And it can import files in XLSX format also :) …..

In November 2006, Office 2007 introduced a new file format: Office Open XML. Now, nearly 2.5 years later, Google can import XLSX files into Google Docs. Besides this change, Google has even more updates in Google Spreadsheets, released.

Make sure to check out the following new features in Google Docs:

• XLSX import. Excel ’07 files (xlsx) can now be successfully imported into Google spreadsheets, supporting cell data, formatting, formulas, font style, background color, named ranges, frozen panes, and horizontal merges. And currently there is no option to export files as .xlsx.
• Google Tournament function. The GoogleTournament() function allows users to query NCAA data (including team names, records, scores, seedings, game times, etc) in a Google spreadsheet (ideal for creating automatic brackets). More info here: http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=142595 and in this blog post:  http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-template-2009-college-basketball.html Also check out GoogleTournament Google has added to our templates gallery: http://docs.google.com/previewtemplate?id=0As3tAuweYU9QcHlVM3hrY2tocEkxaU12Q01UZmlvRUE
• Updated GoogleLookup. The GoogleLookup() function will now attempt to find answers to questions it couldn’t answer before. In addition, there’s now a dialog box to help you pick from among a handful of possible answers if GoogleLookup isn’t sure. Just select the cell and click ‘More Options…’ to choose a different value. More info here: http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=54199
• Updated Motion Chart. The Motion Chart team recently added new features like bar charts and zoom. More info is in our Help Center at: http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=91610 You can also check out this example here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pCQbetd-CptE1ZQeQk8LoNw
• Google Apps automatic identity in Forms. This feature enables the optional collection of the user’s email address when filling out a form on a Google Apps domain. More info here: http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=87809
• Form summary page printing. The form summary page can now be printed through your browser’s “Print” menu.

For more information on bug fixes and notable fixes, visit the Google Docs blog here!